Space Shuttle's Greatest Feat: Redefining the 'Right Stuff'

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's planned Friday (July 8) launch of
the space shuttle Atlantis will be the 135th and final liftoff
for the iconic space program since its debut in 1981.

That works out to an average of 4.5 flights a year for the
space shuttle program. While that figure is a far cry from
the once-a-week frequency NASA predicted back in the early 1970s,
the shuttle flew often enough to fundamentally change how
humanity viewed and used space.

The shuttle opened space up to our species like no vehicle ever
had before, and that — more than any single payload the shuttle
lofted or science experiment it enabled — is probably the
vehicle's greatest accomplishment, experts say.

"Low-Earth orbit has become a routine domain for human
activities," said Roger Launius, space history curator at the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "And the shuttle did
that more than anything else." [ 8
Surprising Space Shuttle Facts ]

Showing what we can do in space

The Hubble
Space Telescope and the International Space Station are two
examples of humanity's growing proficiency in low-Earth orbit,
and the shuttle program helped make both of them happen.

The shuttle Discovery deployed Hubble back in 1990 on its STS-31
mission. Within weeks, astronomers realized something was wrong;
the instrument was returning disappointingly blurry images.
Astronauts on Endeavour's STS-61 mission fixed the telescope in
1993, and multiple shuttle missions thereafter continued to
repair and upgrade Hubble. [ Infographic:
Evolution of the Space Plane ]

As a result, the telescope is still returning stunning images
that have humanity rethinking the universe and our place in it.

"Without the shuttle, you would not have a functioning Hubble
Space Telescope today," said space history expert Robert
Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com and a SPACE.com
contributor.

The shuttle has also been instrumental in
building the International Space Station, the $100 billion
orbiting lab that began construction in 1998 and is now just
about complete. About 40 shuttle missions have lofted pieces of
the station to low-Earth orbit over the years.

It's too soon to tell what the station's legacy will be, many
experts say, but it has the potential to enable groundbreaking
research in many fields, from biology and medicine to materials
science. It's also an immensely complex structure whose assembly
is a marvel of technological competence and international
cooperation.

"I really think expanding human capability in space is the
overarching achievement [of the shuttle program]," said Valerie
Neal, curator for contemporary human spaceflight at the
Smithsonian. "And I think both Hubble and the space station stand
as representatives of that."

Redefining 'the right stuff'

While the shuttle program expanded humanity's capabilities beyond
our home planet, NASA's reusable space planes also opened up
space in a different way: They democratized it to a degree,
making the final frontier more accessible to a broader range of
people.

In the early days of human spaceflight, NASA relied on
high-flying military men, test pilots with nerves of steel such
as Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. But when the shuttle came
along, a much broader cross-section of people were able to ride a
pillar of flame toward the heavens.

Many shuttle astronauts over the years have been scientists by
training, for example — highly accomplished people, to be sure,
but not folks who have devoted their lives to aerospace
derring-do. And geriatrics could go to space on the shuttle, too:
Ohio Sen. John Glenn flew on Discovery's STS-95 mission in 1998
when he was 77 years old. [ Most
Memorable Space Shuttle Missions ]

This reframing of perceptions has likely had a profound effect on
human spaceflight going forward, helping pave the way for the
nascent
space tourism industry, Neal said.

"I think the shuttle really opened up that possibility, mainly
because it looked like an aircraft," Neal told SPACE.com. "It was
a craft people could identify with, and they could imagine being
comfortable riding in it."

The space shuttle was originally envisioned as a way to make
human spaceflight cheap, reliable, frequent and safe. The vehicle
certainly didn't deliver on that promise in full, but it was
capable enough to allow humanity to establish a foothold, and
some skills, in low-Earth orbit. And that, experts say, will
likely be a big part of its legacy.